Let's not kid ourselves, this is a nation building exercise.

You're trying to re-found a country and you're trying to do it by remote control from Washington.

But that's something that's going to take a while to develop.

Hello and welcome to GZERO World.

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And so much for easing into the new year.

It's been about a week since the Trump administration greenlit a stunning Caracas raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife and brought them to New York City to face federal drug trafficking and weapons charges.

It was an operation in scope and execution that only the United States military could have pulled off, and few are lamenting the demise of a dictator who drove millions of Venezuelans into poverty, spurred a refugee crisis larger than the Syrian civil war, and stole an election.

But even a week later, there are more questions than answers about what comes next.

How exactly will the United States run, as Trump says, a country of some 30 million people?

Will acting president Delcy Rodriguez, a long time Maduro ally, actually do as the White House tells her?

And will Venezuela's powerful military accept such an arrangement?

How quickly could all of this devolve into instability?

None of that is clear, but here's what is clear.

This was a big win for Donald J. Trump, a president who has struggled domestically, stymied by a sluggish economy, persistent inflation, and record low popularity, has thrown his weight around internationally.

What's more, Trump was able to get rid of Maduro without having to engage in large-scale strikes against Venezuela's military and drug cartels without losing a single American troop.

President Trump has shown the region and the world who's boss.

Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.

Won't happen.

This is not complicated.

President Trump is saying he has the biggest stick, so he gets to do what he wants.

If you're a leader that he doesn't like, you best watch your back, at least unless you're China or another really powerful country.

Welcome to the law of the jungle.

That message is being heard loud and clear in halls of power in Bogota, in Havana, in Mexico City, heck, even in Copenhagen, where they can see Greenland from their houses.

But here's the thing about the law of the jungle.

What applies to your enemies one day can apply to you the next.

That's what happens when you dismantle a global order that has more or less maintained the peace for the last 80 years.

Make no mistake, this is where the world is heading, and the United States is leading the way.

Joining me with the latest reactions from Capitol Hill is the Democratic Senator from Arizona, Ruben Gallego.

And later, I'll be discussing this unprecedented new chapter of American foreign policy with Stanford University's Frank Fukuyama.

Don't worry, I've also got your puppet regime.

-Donchik!

Wow, you actually went and did it.

-Yeah, I sure did.

-But first, a word from the folks helping us keep the lights on.

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Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, and... Ruben Gallego, welcome to GZERO World.

Thanks for having me.

Hey, so a lot on Venezuela, of course.

I guess I wanted to start by saying that in the last couple of days, I've seen that the Republicans publicly seem to be close to in lockstep with President Trump.

I'm wondering behind the scenes, are you hearing anything different from your colleagues in the Senate across the aisle?

I think what I'm hearing is mostly a wait and see.

I think they, because of the limited scope of what occurred there, they don't want to go sideways with the president, except for maybe a few.

But now that totally changes if there's more troops on the ground, there's more action, there's a lot of things that I think could potentially start drawing some of these more moderate to rational Republicans to kind of join us in trying to stop the presidency from going overboard.

What have you learned since the attacks from the White House about their plans for Venezuela going forward?

There really isn't a plan.

They're kind of just playing this as it goes, which is very scary that they're doing that.

They're hoping that the vice president, the newly installed new dictator there, is going to be able to still hold control over the country, while at the same time negotiate in good faith the White House.

And I just don't think that's going to play out as much as well as they think it is.

But at the end of the day, I think the Venezuelan diaspora is going to be very disappointed by what occurred.

And really, the American public themselves just don't really understand what's happening here and aren't being supportive of a fairly successful military action.

So in the near term, it would seem that, I mean, the military, you're not going to take out the military.

So even if you want to move towards a democratically elected government, that is going to take time.

I guess what I'm wondering is, I mean, you know, Marco Rubio, a former colleague of yours in the Senate, someone that obviously understands the Venezuelan diaspora well, someone who does not want Venezuela to be a dictatorship.

How do you think, do you have any sense in how he navigates this?

Because that's clearly not the top priority for President Trump.

Right.

And generally speaking, the White House, kind of dealing with them both on foreign policy and even some domestic policy issue when it comes to immigration, there are a couple of real divisions over there.

And some of those divisions kind of break down between isolationists and kind of more people towards the Marco Rubio bent, the kind of Stephen Miller world versus Stephen Miller and JD Vance world versus a couple more of the Lutnicks and kind of traditional mainstream Republicans and I think what's happening right now is that they're both fighting for the president's ear.

They're both trying to basically curry favor with him and and the outcome would be entirely different versus you know I think you know Stephen Miller cares about power and holding power and thinks that in my opinion that the more important thing is if there is a puppet there that then the White House has more control that he's more likely to actually recommend that the current dictator stays versus Marco Rubio, who does understand both the local domestic political pressure, which is you have a lot of Southern Floridians who would be really mad if they traded one autocrat for another autocrat, and two, that at the end of the day, all it is doing is going to plunder the economy of Venezuela.

And so that's why there is no movement happening right now.

That's why you have all these mixed messages coming out of the White House, because they don't actually know what they're doing yet, and they're trying to find some level of equilibrium, at least to start moving forward.

But I don't think we're going to see a real move or path coming anytime soon.

Now, the United States clearly does have a level of leverage, both because the military operation was quite successful, they were willing to deploy it, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon, not to mention the power imbalances and the fact that Venezuela didn't get any support from their friends in Russia and China and Iran, Hezbollah, you name it, right?

So, I mean, given all of that, what are the things you think the Trump administration should do?

What should they be prioritizing in the next weeks and months, maybe to turn this into something that could be more sustainable?

I would be trying to put together a path forward into a stable democracy, calling for elections at times certain, release of prisoners in the meantime to show a level of respect to the path that you are going to send, assurances.

The many political prisoners you're talking about from the opposition that are there now.

Exactly.

Release political prisoners to prove that you're willing to go down that road.

Some level of reform when it comes to economic reform.

I would do like some kind of, you know, economic agreement with the United States.

All these things that could actually, you know, set a really good tone and potentially avoid conflict.

The problem is I'm not sure Venezuela understands where the motivation, the interest and the rationale is coming from the White House.

So they may not be able to really gauge what is the right outcome out of this.

And any plans for bipartisan Senate efforts, both in terms of the legislative front in Washington and also potentially any trips going down to the region?

So, we're certainly going to be looking at using the War Powers Resolutions to do a couple votes this week regarding both war in Venezuela, even the boot strikes, something that I authored for the Caribbean region.

I think there will probably be some CODELs that go down to the region, but obviously not to Venezuela, as well as right now we're also focusing, unfortunately, on Greenland, something that we didn't think we had to take as serious, but there clearly is something happening at the White House.

And after we saw what happened in Venezuela, we can't really take any chances that these guys are gonna do something really crazy there.

- And Denmark, I mean, they do feel a little frozen out right now.

I mean, not only because Trump, Stephen Miller, others are saying that, you know, all options are on the table and they want sovereignty, they wanna have Greenland, but also because they've sort of frozen out the Danes in terms of direct diplomacy.

So what do you think needs to happen here?

What can the Senate do?

And again, is this a bipartisan effort?

Is this an area that you think the Republicans really do see as kind of a red line that Trump should not cross?

- I am actually working on legislation right now both to limit the amount of money, like any money that can be used federally to invade Greenland through appropriations process.

We're putting together war powers resolutions, basically trying to stop us from going into Greenland.

We're currently talking to the government of Denmark as senators.

This is more on the Democrats side.

The other two efforts actually are bipartisan to really make sure they understand that this is not a popular position.

And we have heard Republicans publicly state that they don't want to see Greenland being invaded.

Now, the most important thing is for us to have a unified focus as the Senate to make sure we send that message to the White House so they don't just kind of run roughshod over this and thinking that there's going to be automatic support for such a crazy thing.

And otherwise, just as we think about the region and this Donroe doctrine, both allies, Mexico, Colombia, that are concerned about their sovereignty and what the U.S.

might do unilaterally against narco-cartels there, drug infrastructure, as well as adversaries like Cuba and Nicaragua.

Anything you want to add?

Well, look, I think it's important for me, especially with my Colombian heritage and Mexican heritage, I'm certainly doing outreach to both countries to make sure they understand that the position that the president's taking is not a position that is shared by the whole government, especially the Senate.

I hope that some of them will also calibrate what they do themselves, because the president is very sensitive, as we've noticed.

And some movements or ill-time comments can really trigger potentially some very caustic reactions.

So just the kind of personal connections, communications are what we're going to continue doing.

And then, of course, again, anything else we can find within the power of us as a Senate to restrict the executive, we're going to have to do it.

And we want to do it.

Senator Ruben Gallego, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thanks for having me.

Joining me now to discuss what this all means for the region and the world is a man who wrote a little book about the end of history, and yes, with a lot of awareness of just how much history was still to come, Stanford University's Frank Fukuyama.

Frank Fukuyama, Stanford University, good to see you, my friend.

Good to see you, Ian.

So, let's maybe start with the Donroe Doctrine.

Before we dive into Venezuela, when you hear that expression of U.S.

foreign policy, how does it strike you?

Well, it worries me a lot because American interests are not restricted to the Western Hemisphere, even if they were.

The assertion of dominance over everybody else in the hemisphere by the United States is not a good look for American foreign policy.

But it also means a downgrading of Europe and Asia, where we have extremely big interests and a lot of big threats, potentially.

And it worries me that if we get too sucked into and preoccupied with our hemisphere, that we're going to let things slide elsewhere in the world.

The other thing is that so much of the Trump foreign policy has been driven, I think, more by personal interest on the part of the president than by any kind of coherent strategy.

You know, I think in that respect, the attack on the Iranian nuclear enrichment plant was-it was an unfortunate example, because I think it demonstrated to the president that you could do a quick in-and-out strike, it'll be effective, and, you know, you can claim a victory.

And, you know, he did this with Maduro in capturing the president of a sovereign country.

But when you go to Ukraine or Taiwan or other parts of the world where there may be instability, you're not going to have a one-and-done kind of operation.

These are really serious.

And, you know, from everything I see about this president, he's not prepared to get into a serious, protracted, costly military engagement with another pure superpower.

When you see what happened in Venezuela, it is a spectacular military operation.

Maduro is out.

Most people are not particularly shedding tears over that.

If Trump were to leave it at that, would you consider that successful or not particularly?

No, I would say not particularly, because more than other leaders, you know, the Venezuelan authoritarian regime does not revolve around Nicolas Maduro.

You know, if you took Putin out or Xi out, you'd have very different situations.

But you know, he was just a front man for a broader, you know, in a way, criminal conspiracy, and that conspiracy is still there.

And so there's still going to be drug running, and there's still going to be human rights violations, and there's still going to be, you know, support for Iran and China.

So I don't think you've solved the problem at all.

And then furthermore, you know, if you really thought about domestic American interest, one of the most important ones is refugees.

Eight million Venezuelans have left the country.

A lot of them are in the United States, and a lot of these refugees that Donald Trump doesn't like actually would like to go home to Venezuela.

And unless you create the conditions where they felt safe to do so, they're not going to budge.

So, no, I don't think it's going to be a big success if they just leave at this point.

So what do they now need to do?

Because clearly the conditions are not in place to have democratic elections tomorrow, and you couldn't get rid of the military overnight even if you wanted to.

But if you were advising them, and I know that you've had a lot of contact with the democratic opposition in Venezuela of late there at Stanford, what would you be saying?

- In the short run, they don't have any choice but to work with Delcy Rodriguez, the vice president, now the president.

- Acting president, yeah.

- Acting president, because they do need stability in the short run, but with the blockade of oil that we are imposing on them, their economy is gonna collapse.

I mean, it's already in horrible shape, but they're not gonna be able to feed their own people up in a few short weeks.

And that could lead to some very, very serious social instability.

And let's not kid ourselves, this is a nation building exercise.

You're trying to refound a country and you're trying to do it by remote control from Washington.

But you know, what's fundamental, and I think what we learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, is legitimacy is important.

You have to have a government, A, and then it has to be a government that people are willing to obey, whose laws, you know, mean something to people.

And that's the point at which, you know, maybe even Donald Trump may come around to thinking, "Yeah, maybe we do need a democratically-legitimated leader."

But that's, you know, that's something that's gonna take a while to develop.

- What are the early steps?

If Marco Rubio now, he's got his success, he's Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, he cares, he's got constituents there in Florida that really want these emigres to be able to go back home.

They want to be able to invest in this country.

They also want a legitimate democracy.

I mean, that is what the Venezuelans in the United States want.

What should he press President Trump for over the course of the next couple of months?

- Yeah, you know, I think one of the things we've learned in many countries around the world is that being an opposition group, even a well-organized one in civil society, a democratic opposition group, does not prepare you for governing.

And a lot of the, unfortunately, a lot of the failures in the last couple of decades have been, you know, taking power when you're not really ready to do this.

So there's a lot of preparation that needs to be done on the part of the democratic, you know, opposition, who's going to occupy these different ministerial posts, you know, how are they going to structure economic policy, there's a lot of work of that sort.

I think that, actually, we've got a lot of leverage that we could exercise over the existing regime to keep it, you know, if the goal is actually, at some point, to have democratic elections, they also have to be prepared to accept, you know, let's say, international observers.

And we've got to start talking to them about, you know, what our expectations are, if we're not going to hit them a second time or, you know, capture more of their leaders.

Beyond that, though, I would say that, you know, as a student of nation-building exercises, you cannot plan these things, you know, terribly well in advance, because they always go sideways at some point in ways that you're not expecting.

And I think the expectation that you can plan these things is a danger.

You have to be much more improvisational as we go along.

So we'll see.

You know, this administration does not give me a lot of confidence that, you know, they know what they're doing.

But for the Venezuelan for the sake of the Venezuelan people, I hope they, you know, they actually can see a way through this.

- The Russians, of course, very openly critical of what just transpired in Venezuela, but they're not doing anything about it that I can see.

The Chinese were shocked.

They're very critical.

They're not doing anything about it, supporting their friends in Venezuela.

The Europeans, not even particularly critical, more cautious and monitoring the situation makes them look a lot weak.

Should other countries in the world that find stability useful, at least, and most of them do, should they be acting differently in this environment?

Well, yeah, I think so.

You've got Colombia, Mexico, Greenland.

They haven't talked about Panama recently, but that's another possible target of an expansionist American foreign policy.

In the case of Greenland, this is going to kill NATO.

It can really kill NATO if the dominant NATO ally that has always been the adult in the room with the NATO allies itself becomes a major threat to other NATO allies.

Like you just imagine Article 5 that pledges every NATO member to come to the aid of any other NATO member that's attacked.

What if one of them is attacked by another NATO member?

So they're obviously not going to band together to fight the United States.

And I just think that'll be the end of NATO.

And again, this is the problem that spheres of influence kind of worldview allows the other spheres, Europe and Asia, to be dominated by their local hegemonic power.

And, you know, that's not good for world peace.

- I mean, we haven't really talked about norms, but what we have seen is that a lot of the norms that people have presumed exist and are strong and will continue, either Americans presuming them about the way their political system works, or allies presuming them about the way the United States will behave, turn out to be rather less robust than they had initially believed.

And so what does it mean if you have a United States, the world's most powerful country that simply rips up norms?

Does that mean the Greenland just becomes American?

I mean, if you put your crystal ball on and you've spoken a lot about where you think the world is heading over your storied career, where do you think the world is likely to be geopolitically in five years' time?

I think that if Trump weakens domestically, and there's already some signs that that's beginning to happen, maybe he will be forced to pull back.

You know, if you get a Democratic victory in November that retakes the House for the Democrats, it's going to put some brakes on Trump, although less in foreign policy than in other areas.

But the downside is really bad.

You know, Ukraine could fall to Russia, I mean, the whole of Ukraine and not just the Donbas.

China could, I think, less a full-scale invasion, but they could throw a blockade around Taiwan.

They've been holding exercises to practice that sort of thing.

And at that point, the United States isn't going to do one of these one-and-done things.

These are really serious military rivals, and the U.S.

is going to have to decide whether it's in or out.

And under this president, I just can't imagine that he's going to be willing to risk, you know, a big war with a big superpower.

So you're saying that the Chinese and the Russians have greater optionality in this environment?

I think the Russians, you know, could end up dominating Ukraine and then move on to other targets in Europe, you know, Georgia, Moldova, the Baltics.

And I think China could reincorporate Taiwan.

And then, you know, as I think they've been aiming out for some time, you know, be the dominant power in East Asia and force the other American allies like Korea and Japan to toe the line.

Frank Fukuyama, it's always a pleasure to talk to you.

I wish it were a cheerier subject, but good to talk to you, Ian.

[music] And now the puppet regime.

No, not the one in Caracas.

The one with actual puppets, where President Trump hears from an old friend.

Donchik!

Wow, you actually went and did it.

Yeah, I sure did.

Invasion of a neighbor on flimsy pretext with unclear strategy.

Well, I learned from watching the besties, you know.

Yeah, yeah, you sure did, you sure did.

But now shoe is on other foot, huh?

What do you mean?

Well, now I can be one asking you, like, "Hey, want to end war in Venezuela?"

And you can say, "No."

"Want to end war in Venezuela?"

"No."

Well, that's probably fine.

Just... just keep going there.

What could possibly go wrong?

That's our show this week.

We come back next week, and if you like what you see, or even if you don't, but you genuinely, honestly, no joke, cannot believe that 2026 is really going to be like this, then why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com?

(upbeat music) - Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint (upbeat music) and scale their supply chains.

(upbeat music) With a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at Prologis.com.

And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is investing in the future, working to create an impact in advanced recycling and in emerging technology companies that will help shape tomorrow.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And... ♪♪